Week 7, Thing 16 (Learn About Wikis)

I have used the wikis we have here at CCPL for postings to other members of a team. I looked at the examples of the different ways you can use a wiki and I liked the best practices one and the one that St. Joseph County created with subject guides. The downside for me is keeping it up to date. Even as I was exploring some of the links provided by the wikis, there were ones that went nowhere and that would be frustrating to anyone trying to use them to find information.

Week 6, Thing 15 (Web 2.0 Library 2.0 and the Future of Libraries)

I read a lot of the articles that were listed on the exercise page for this Thing. One of the statements that stayed with me the most was this from the article by Michael Stephens.

Librarian 2.0 controls technolust This librarian does not buy technology for the sake of technology. “Techno-worship” does not exist here. Without a firm foundation in the mission and goals of the institution, new technologies are not implemented for the sake of coolness and status. Technology is put to the test: Does it meet the users need in a new or improved way? Does it create a useful service for putting users together with the information and experience they seek? These are some of the questions this librarian asks when planning for technology. This librarian creates and nurtures a living, breathing technology plan.

Don't get me wrong; I think a lot of this stuff is very cool and I like playing with it a lot. I just think that asking some of the questions ahead of time can make things better for our customers.

Week 6, Thing 14 (Technorati)

When I went exploring on Technorati, I found another blog that I then added to my Bloglines list. It's called Neat and Simple Living and is all about de-cluttering and getting organized. Maybe it will help me transform some of my cluttered habits... a person can dream can't they?
It was also interesting to see that one of the frequently used tags included learning 2.0. I wonder if with all of us tagging our posts with mdlearn2 we'll soon see that on the list?

mdlearn2

Week 6, Thing 13 (Del.icio.us)

I listened to the podcast tutorial from Otter Group on this site and I read all the linked articles but what I liked the most was when I went to the site itself and they gave you ideas for how to use it. The ideas that really grabbed my attention were how you could go to commercial sites and find things you liked and then create a wish list in del.icio.us so that all your friends and family could see what you wanted and buy it for you. The other way you could use it that I liked was when planning a trip you could bookmark all the sites you liked of places to stay or eat etc. so you could refer to them later. They would all be together if you give them all the same tags which is better than just bookmarking them on your browser. And the last way that you could use del.icio.us that I liked was to find recipes and then tag them so that you can refer to them over and over again. I will definitely come back to this and set up an account to use it in one of these ways.

Week 5, Thing 12 (Rollyo)

Rollyo wasn't working very well this morning. Maybe there were too many of us trying to access it at the same time. I am also not having a lot of success providing links to things in my blog. When I use the icon in the Edit HTML, it just doesn't seem to work. Others are using the Compose mode but when I click on that, nothing happens. I have asked for help but no one so far has been able to help me get it to work. So for the time being, I am cutting and pasting the URL so at least that is in the blog. I will go back and try and figure out what I am doing wrong later as I really need to catch up to the week we are on right now. I like the idea of Rollyo especially for sites that are hard to find and you want to be able to go back to.

See link to Rollyo at top of left-hand column

Week 5, Thing 11 (Library Thing)

What was interesting to me was the fact that when I tried to think of titles to catalog at Library Thing I went blank. Now, I have been reading for a lot of years and there are hundreds of titles that I have either read or listened to, but for the life of me, I couldn't think which ones I wanted to share. But finally, I just sort of jumped in and decided you know it really doesn't matter whether other people think my list is boring or weird or whatever, just go ahead and list them. Which I did. I even wrote a "review" of one just to say that I did.

See Library Thing Link at the top of left-hand column of blog.

Week 4, Thing 9 (MERLIN)

One thing that I was able to get from Merlin was a couple of new RSS feeds for my Bloglines account. There were a couple there that seem pretty interesting and although I might not be able to read it everyday, I think it might be useful to look at it when I can to see what all is going on out there in other library worlds.